


A Very Skeptical Apothecary

by tortuosity



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Gen, Halloween Gift Exchange, Silly, Spooky, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:53:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21260222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tortuosity/pseuds/tortuosity
Summary: Pella tells Adan one of her favorite Harvestmere stories, a Fereldan adaptation of Latin America's "La Llorona." A little holiday gift for a friend :)





	A Very Skeptical Apothecary

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tanaleth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanaleth/gifts).

“I don’t suppose you believe in ghosts, do you?” Pella asked.

“No, I don’t believe in that rubbish,” Adan replied brusquely. He looked up from his workbench in time to catch Pella’s pout. “Oh, don’t tell me you’re surprised.”

“But you believe in spirits?” she tried.

Setting his paring knife down, he took a measured breath. “I believe in the creatures that come out of those rifts the Herald has to seal up, yes. Given that I can _see_ them, it lends a bit more credibility to their existence.”

“So you won’t mind if I tell a ghost story while we prep this elfroot.”

“Do I have a choice?” 

Would it truly be so terrible to work in silence for once? Adan could no longer remember the sound of his own thoughts.

“It wasn’t a question, Adan,” Pella said pointedly before turning back to her own elfroot, stripping the leaves from the stems while she spoke: “Anyway, Minaeve told me this one. She said it was a common Harvestmere story in her Circle. They used it to scare the new kids into behaving.”

“I’ll keep it in mind the next time I’m forced to have an assistant,” he muttered, cutting off a particularly tough growth on a root and nearly slicing a chunk out of his thumb in the process. 

Pella, apparently, had no trouble working and speaking at the same time, chattering away as the stack of leaves on her own bench grew taller.

“‘Forced,’ huh? Nice, nice. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. So, the story. Let’s see… legend says that long ago, there was a little village near Lake Calenhad. And in that village, there lived a young woman named Anna. She had it all: intelligence, confidence, kindness, beauty… she was the pride of the village.”

“And then she died,” Adan said flatly. All these stories were the same.

“Hush!” Pella waved a freshly-stripped stem at him. “Anyway, the son of the bann came to the village one day, and when he saw Anna, he was instantly smitten, and she with him. When he proposed, she of course accepted, and they were soon wed. The whole village celebrated their union, and when she eventually birthed two sons, they were doted upon like royalty. All was wonderful. Time passed, and her husband inherited the bannorn from his father. He often needed to leave her alone in the village to survey his lands.”

He would never get enough roots chopped at this rate. “A likely excuse, I’m sure.”

“I’m getting there! As the years went on, things became less wonderful between Anna and the bann. He was distant, only paying attention to their young sons when he bothered to return to the village at all. Anna began to grow resentful of her husband…” She paused for emphasis and dropped her voice down low. “And then her children.” 

“And then they separated and the bann retained sole custody of the children.”

Pella rolled her eyes, finally choosing to ignore his interruptions. “Here is where the story changes depending on the teller. Some say Anna was secretly a mage and she fell under a demon’s thrall. Some say an envious neighbor poisoned her bread with a toxin that rotted her mind. But the truth,” she murmured, eyebrows raised, “is far more mundane and sinister. She was simply driven mad by jealousy and rage. She took her sons down to the lake, the way she always did when it was time for their baths. And then, when it came time to wash their hair, she held them down beneath the surface of the lake until they stopped struggling.”

Adan’s knife lay forgotten on the table, his pile of chopped elfroot no larger than it was before. 

Her own stack of elfroot now stripped, Pella began to stack the sodden leaves on the drying racks. She continued her story, but the dramatic tone she had chosen at the start now shifted to something honest, something sad, and Adan found himself more enraptured than he would ever willingly admit.

“The villagers found their bodies a few days later, bloated and festering on the shore. Anna was so distraught by what she did that she, too, drowned herself in Lake Calenhad, right beside her children. But Anna’s spirit couldn’t cross the Veil—she was in too much torment to accept the afterlife. Because of her sins, her children’s spirits were also denied rest, so she's cursed to wander Ferelden, endlessly searching for them. At night, you can hear her crying, weeping for her sons. It’s said that Fereldan mothers should hold their own sons and daughters tight, lest Anna mistake them for her own and steal them right out of their beds while they sleep.”

Adan remembered his own mother then, the way she always scolded him for staying out too late. And then he remembered some of the other children in the alienage, the ones who didn’t listen to their mothers, the ones who ran away in the middle of the night. The ones who went to bed and never woke up.

The door to the apothecary banged open, a gust of winter air blasting leaves across the table as a voice called out, “I’ve brought more elfroot!”

When Adan’s heart fell from his throat and returned to its usual place in his chest several moments later, several moments after his decidedly undignified shriek, he turned to see Lysette holding a bundle of plants, her cheeks ruddy, rogue strands of hair loose and damp across her forehead.

“Maker’s balls, woman!” he grumbled, and surely the heat in his face was only a response to the frigid air blowing in from the bloody open door. “Don’t they teach you templars how to knock?”

Pella bent to gather the scattered leaves, but not fast enough to hide her smile.


End file.
